mini paper #2

Aaron Rodriguez

July 23,2019

Mini Paper #2

Cohort 21S

“High School students who participate in athletics are found to possess, on average, better GPAs, have more self-confidence and demonstrate leadership abilities” (MasterAlexis,2015). Through my entire life, I have been part of organized league sports. Despite being a part of sports since my early childhood I was unable to see the benefits of sports until middle school. In middle school, my family was moved out to Italy because of my mom being stationed out there for the military. At the time of the announcement, I did not want to leave. I already had friends in San Diego and I was scared of not being able to make new ones in Italy. In the spring I decided to play baseball which is where I ended up making the most friends and eased my worries about not making any. Until that point baseball had been a sport I had never played before besides hitting tennis balls outside of my yard pretending I had hit home runs for the world series or throwing baseballs at old beat-up toy care imagining that I had made the final save of a game which when entering the season caused me to question if this was something I wanted to do. In that spring I joined Little League, I was able to pick up the sport relatively easy due to the fact that Tennis was my main sport as a kid and similar hand-eye coordination skills were utilized in both sports. The main thing was asked by other parents to mine was, How long has your son been playing?’ To their surprise, my parents would respond, “ Oh, this is his first year.” The attention I got garnered a recommendation from my Little League coach for him to suggest that I try out for the all-star team. At first, I was nervous because all the other kids had been playing at an early age and showed what I believed to be more skilled at the time. At the end of tryouts to my surprise, I made the team. After the announcement was made one of the kids had made some snarky comment,” Did you know you were one of the last ones picked?” I had no reason to believe this was untrue since his dad was one of the assistant coaches. This motivated me to prove that I had belonged on the team and I made sure that I spent time improving my skills and learning the strategies. The head coach of that team was Coach Bartley, Coach Bartley had lived in Italy for 10 years and knew all the kids very well, besides me. In the beginning, all I saw from him was the strict coach who wanted everything done perfectly. Coach Bartley became a father figure that the team needed but he knew when to compliment a player when he did a good job and make the game fun. The thing that stood out to me was the transition from their constant yelling in practice to them holding dinners after practice to build a sense of unity within the team. On the last day, before we were going to leave for the tournament we had a slip and slide ( a tarp with water running down it) to practice sliding drills. This was one of the ways to show that this was a game and it was fun but still be productive to teach how to play the game properly. The next year we had a new all-star coach, Coach Weider. He was another coach who was always trying to teach discipline but still wanted to have fun. My most distinct memory was when we had been late to practice as a team, we rushed over to try and start practice before he noticed and he played it off like it was nothing we spread out ( at the time we used our arms to evenly space out). When we put our arms out to space out our coach yelled: “ Did I tell you to put your arms down?” For the next 20 minutes, we had to keep our arms up, which seemed to be our punishment for being late. This discipline and camaraderie proved to be beneficial in the classroom as well which showed up when players would come back with grades putting them on the honor roll. This is what I believe all the good coaches of my middle and high school coaches wanted for the kids. 7.3% of high school baseball players get an NCAA Division I scholarship and from that 2% of those players become professional ( NCAA.com). With this in mind, our coaches knew the odds were against us so they always pushed our studies but still allowed us to dream that we could make it by encouraging us to work hard.

As I went to high school this kind of hard but fair leadership continued with my basketball team had the greatest impact on me. This team became a family “For a parent, the family counts most of all; for a good leader, the team is nothing less than extended family” (Wooden 2005). Wooden summarizes the experience that I had with my team perfectly. In general, living on a military base puts you in a small community. My school had 700 students in high school and this was considered a Division II school. My basketball story all begins with tryouts, I am not a particularly tall person ( 5 foot 6 in) however, I loved the game of basketball and really wanted to be on the team. The team only had 15 spots and by the end of tryouts, I was disappointed to hear that I had not made the team. One of the things that surprised me, however, is that the basketball coach ( Coach Lord) pulled me aside and told me how hard it was to cut me because he knew how hard I was working to prove I deserved to be on the team and to continue to work hard. A week later, I had heard that the basketball coach wanted to talk to me. When I went to his classroom I was confused because there was no reason for me to be there, I didn't even have a class with him. He said, “Congratulations you are on the team”. I was really confused and later found out that someone dropped to join the wrestling team. From that point on I knew I had to prove I had belonged (again). Being on a sports team made this already tight-knit community even closer. We would spend late nights together hanging out at each other's houses and everyone was accountable for the actions of each other. Specifically, this was accountability for the team was shown in practice. In an effort to prove I belonged I had been the one who messed up the most. The coach always wanted to have things done “the right way”. If we missed a layup or did the drill wrong we would have to redo it and run suicides after practice for the mistake as a team. This made everybody have to focus on their technique to get the drill right and push others to do the same. The coach pushed us to do our best and this was carried onto the seniors (the leaders of the team) and the rest of the team. This hard work and dedication to paying attention to the fundamentals ended up paying off in the end when at the end of the season we won the DODDS Division II European Championship. This experience taught me a lot but, one thing in particular and that is: It doesn't matter how much you succeed at something by but the fact that you succeded. It didn’t matter if I was the star player or a bench warmer the fact that I made it meant that I had an opportunity to contribute to the team and thats all someone can get, an opportunity. Since then this kind of attention to making sure to pay attention to how things are done and doing them the “right way” has carried on to the way that I approach tasks today. Going into spring, I was confident in my athletic abilities and was on the “high” of winning a championship. ”At UCLA during holidays such as Thanksgiving or Christmas, my wife Nell, and I would invite them for dinner when they could not make it home to be with their immediate families” (Wooden,p.84). This was the same way with my baseball coach, Coach Marlow. He did extra things to help kids succeed and treated his players as if they were his own kids. He would buy kids lunches if they didn’t have money, turn his classroom into a rec center bringing out nets for ping pong and show kids magic tricks. He made us feel like we had somewhere we could go and have fun and have someone we could trust. When it came to the baseball field he would do his best to make sure the team was successful by building batting cages on campus so we could have somewhere easily accessible to practice and would stay late if a player wanted to work on their technique or ask for tips on their game. He was very encouraging and even when we failed he would always say

Once I moved back to the United States I encountered new leaders. My tennis coach was not a particularly good leader and had bad ways of trying to motivate the team. His form of trying to motivate us was to talk about the skill of the other team and hope that we would work hard to rise to their level. This did not work however, because most players just felt bad about themselves because the coach and the player had different goals. The coach had a “win at all costs” mentality while the player was looking to improve physical fitness and become healthier. This type of mentality almost got me to leave the team my senior year when in the winter before the tennis season I played ‘winter ball” for baseball and had contemplated leaving the tennis team for the baseball team. The coach had complained to the baseball coach and the baseball coach had told me that the tennis coach did not want me to leave. In the end, I had gone back to the tennis team because even though I had frustrations with the coach I wanted to have my final season with my team to help my team succeed.

 Once I reached college there was a mix of good and bad leaders. I joined a community service fraternity called Alpha Phi Omega. Through my time here I was highly involved and was in positions that had good and bad leaders. Some of the presidents I worked under really focused on the team and how the team would succeed and what they can do to help with that. Other presidents had their own agenda and tried to push others who were in positions that created events to fulfill the agenda that they wanted. The ones that focused on the team had little drama in their term while those who pushed their own agendas had people always talking behind their backs because of their dissatisfaction with the job that they were doing.

All of these experiences caused me to realize this one fact that when you focus on your own self-interest you will not be an effective leader but when you look for the success of the team everything can be achieved. The people I classified as good leaders were leaders who were willing to sacrifice their own time, energy and sometimes even money to be able to provide tools to help the team succeed. While the people who were considered bad leaders were people looking for glory for themselves at the expense of the team. Those leaders who took the extra time and effort will always be in my memory which allowed me to gain the skills and personal growth that I have today.

References

John wooden wooden on leadership how to create a winning organization (2005, McGraw hill)

Masteralexis, L. P., Barr, C. A., & Hums, M. A.Principles and practice of sports management. 5 Wall Street Burlington MA 01803: Jones and Bartlett Learning.